Artista fiorentino, seconda metà XVI secolo

Oil on panel

61.5x51 cm. Framed

The middle-aged gentlewoman portrayed here could perhaps be a widow, if we consider the reserved, dignified and melancholy character skillfully captured by the painter, but also the attributes that characterize her: the veil, the two rings in view on the ring finger of her right hand and the neatly folded handkerchief on her left. Because of its meticulous physiognomic rendering and the sharpness of the stroke, the portrait can be placed within the Florentine figurative culture of the second half of the 16th century. More specifically, for reasons of style, pictorial subject matter and expressive register this remarkable portrait could be approached from the hand of Santi di Tito, although this area of the Tuscan master's production still needs to be adequately studied and clarified. Although there is a dearth of certain references within his portrait corpus, the similarities between our painting and the two Portraits of a Lady in the Bardini Museum in Florence, recently referred to Santi di Tito by Roberto Ciabattini, are worth noting in the meantime.